Tagged: podcast

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

From William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1996)

The tragic love story that is Romeo and Juliet was what my class and I had been studying for the last month, for our newest project. In the process we read the play, made 2 podcast episodes, watched different adaptions of the story and to tie it together, in the end, we created a live audio story of our own adaptation of the play. The driving question that we were answering for our adaption was: How can we present a live audio story that makes an audience appreciate the relevance of Shakespeare?

So, now that I’ve given you a pretty solid base as to what this project really was all about, let’s go into the process of these parts of the project. 

First off, we read the play. My first impression was that it was very blah; hard to understand, confusing and pretty odd. When we first read Shakespeare back in grade 8, I expected it to live up to the hype, because, people always say how genius and amazing Shakespeare is as well as is writing. But, I thought otherwise. As did the people that I collaborated with in the first podcast episode of this project — Matthew and Noah. In this episode, we talked about what a classic is and what makes Romeo and Juliet such a classic. 

I found creating a co-hosted episode was a lot more entertaining for audience members because you got to see us joking around and having fun which was pretty different compared to my previous episodes. Not to mention, it was also just a lot more fun to record. As far as the episode overall, I think it was great for my group and I’s time making an episode like this, but I still could have added a lot more clips in between for giving context during the conversation. 

Next, I collaborated with the same people to do a second co-hosted podcast. This episode was a follow up to the last one, but instead, we talked about adaptations. Those adaptations were more focused on the movie adaptations we watched on the play, but we brought on our own points and topics as well. 

For this episode, believe it or not, my group took everything that was good about our last episode, and made it even better. Our chemistry/making it seem like we were actually good friends, giving the audience a good sense of all our personalities and the planning for the topics and questions we were going to discuss in the episode, was hugely improved. And for this episode, I made sure to add a lot more clips of myself talking in between clips do give more context to the viewer. I also want to add that I really liked the the first minute of my episode or so turned out. 

For this episode, believe it or not, my group took everything that was good about our last episode, and made it even better. Our chemistry/making it seem like we were actually good friends, giving the audience a good sense of all our personalities and the planning for the topics and questions we were going to discuss in the episode, was hugely improved. And for this episode, I made sure to add a lot more clips of myself talking in between clips do give more context to the viewer. I also want to add that I really liked the the first minute of my episode or so turned out.

After completing our two episodes, we went straight to the planning of our play, which actually turned out quite well. In the play, I was put as “director”, so I basically made sure everyone was  in line and said their lines or made the sound effect at the right time. I think it was a good role for me, since acting is really not my strong-suit and I typically like telling people what to do. But, maybe one day, if we were to do something like this again as a project, I might try going out of my comfort zone to try and do something different. 

Overall, I actually ended up quite liking this project. At the beginning, I was not a fan of Shakespeare whatsoever. But now, I’m not saying I’m a fan, but I understand why it’s considered . By the time the project was done and I had done some reflection on the project as a whole, I realized that after a while, it was very satisfying to read his poetry, typically out loud, which I think I realized from the making of the radio show and when learning about his poetry style. Not to mention, Shakespeare did create 1,700 words and things such as the knock-knock joke, which is also pretty incredible. 

I recommend that you watch our final performance down bellow, and let me know what you think!

Bye!

Don’t Clone Your Pet.

In week 2 of our project on Romeo and Juliet, we’ve once again created a second co-hosted podcast episode. This episode was about adaptations, which is basically any form of media transformed into another. Or honestly, it doesn’t even have to be a form of media, it could be pretty much anything. My group in fact got into a discussion about animal adaptations and cloning, and what it can lead to, which is exactly what I am here to talk about.

 Pet cloning has struck popularity all the way in South Korea.

There is a lab team called “The Sooam Biotech Research Foundation”, who specialize in cloning dogs by injecting cloned embryos into the uterus of an anesthetized dog.

They typically cloned these animals for pet owners, but sometimes they are used for police agencies. At the time this article that I found was published (2015), this lab charged 100, 000$ for this process and was the only lab in the entire world to provide this cloning procedure on dogs (since there had been other procedures done on cattle, rabbits, mules and cats). But, I’m sure that after 6 years, there’s now way more labs that are also doing it, and for way less money. 

Cloning a dog sounds pretty cool right? Personally, my family and I just lost our family dog, Pender, and the thought of reincarnating him sounded quite appealing. However, I found these articles that stated how terrible of an idea it is to clone a dog, or any animal for that matter.

Aside from the process itself being extremely questionable, it also takes a lot of dogs just to clone one dog. Although the success rate is much higher now, the first successful dog cloning (Snuppy), had more than 1,000 embryos implanted into 123 surrogates, with only 3 pregnancies resulting from that, and only two surviving through birth. 

“You can clone the look of a dog, but you can’t clone the soul”   – Barbra Streisand

Barbra Streisand, the American singer had cloned her dog that unfortunately passed away. But she came to later find out that the two clones she created had completely different personalities from her original dog. Sure, they looked the same, and their genetics were the same, but that was pretty much it. 

It’s these very facts why cloning your family pet or any other animals has still not quite taken off. While it is popular, it is not mainstream; there’s a very extremely low chance that you know someone in your life who’s actually cloned their pet before. It is expensive, is a long process, and frankly, not really worth it. 

Additionally, governments are actually guarding against where these sorts of technologies might go or adapt to. For example, in Canada, under the 2004 Assisted Human Reproduction Act, “the creation of a human clone by using any technique and the transplant of a human clone into a human being or into any non-human life form or artificial device is criminally prohibited.” 

Anyways, that’s all for now. 

Bye!

 

Works Cited:

Stein, Rob. “Disgraced Scientist Clones Dogs, And Critics Question His Intent”. NPR.  September 2015.  Why Is A South Korean Doctor Cloning Dogs? : Shots – Health …www.npr.org › sections › health-shots › 2015/09/30 › dis… Accessed Jan 19 2021.

Brogan, Jacob. “The Real Reasons You Shouldn’t Clone Your Dog”. Smithsonian Magazine. March 1018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-cloning-your-dog-so-wrong-180968550/ Accessed Jan 19 2021.

Gibbens, Sarah. “We Can Clone Pet Dogs-But Is That a Good Idea?” National Geographic. February 2018. Barbra Streisand’s Cloned Dogs Explainedwww.nationalgeographic.com › news › 2018/02 › barb… Accessed Jan 19 2021.

Isasi, Rosario and Shukairy, Maya. “6.3 Cloning”. Royal College Of Physicians And Surgeons Of Canada. July 29 2015. https://www.royalcollege.ca/rcsite/bioethics/cases/section-6/cloning-e Accessed Jan 19 2021.

Knock-Knock! Who’s there?

In case you didn’t know, I created a new episode this week. But, this one was a little special since it was actually an episode co-hosted by my classmates, Matthew and Noah. This episode’s goal was to help understand why the story of Romeo and Juliette is such a classic, and what exactly makes a classic. 

For this week’s weekly post, I decided that I wanted to go more in depth about something that my group and I were pretty proud of finding. (Quick story: mid-conversation, we were talking about knock-knock jokes and Matthew was curious to see when and who created this classic joke. And we found out that it was originally first used in Shakespeare’s MacBeth, which we just so happen to be doing a project on). So, I decided to extend a little more into this topic and learn more about the history of the knock-knock joke. After doing some research, here is what I had found. 

It is actually not for sure, but is said to be a possibility that Shakespeare’s MacBeth in 1606 was the source of this joke. In Act 2, Scene 3, the porter in the story was very hungover from the night before, and says “Knock Knock! Who’s there” in his monologue.

“Knock, knock! Who's there, i' the name ofBeelzebub? Here's a farmer, that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty: come in time; have napkins enow about you; here you'll sweat for't. Knock, knock! Who's there, in the other devil's name? Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven: O, come in, equivocator.”

The second time it had been used was in the paper for Oakland Tribune. Merely McEvoy talked about a style joke around the year 1900. Where the joke went something like: “Do you know Arthur? Arthur who? Arthurmometer!”

It was also used a couple times after that, but then, used once again in a newspaper advertisement in 1936 about book called Knock Knock written by a man named Bob Dunn: 

“Knock, knock! Who's there? Rufus. Rufus who? Rufus the most important part of your house.”

It was also said that Bob Dunn had invented the Knock Knock joke in that very book. 

After the year 1936, it started rising in popularity but then had gone down since people who loved the joke were said to have social problems. The format was well known in the UK and US in the 1950’s and 1960s before. Until it became a regular part on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-in, which was a show that ran from 1968-1973. And after that, this joke has gone to what it is today, a classic. Anyways, please stay tuned for my next podcast episode and weekly post. Bye!

Work Cited: 

Barrie, Joshua. “The unlikely origin of the knock knock joke — and how it was first told”.  Mirror. April 28 2017. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/unlikely-origin-knock-knock-joke-10315103 Accessed Jan 11 2021.

“Knock-knock joke”. Wikipedia. Last edited December 26 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knock-knock_joke. Accessed Jan 11.

“The Secret History of Knock-Knock Jokes”. NPR. March 3 2015. https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/03/03/389865887/the-secret-history-of-knock-knock-jokes Accessed Jan 11 2021.

 

The Youth in World War II

The Second World War was the biggest and most dangerous war than any other war in history, with over 75 million deaths (four times more compared to WWI) and involving over 30 countries. 

This is what we’ve been learning about this last month for our newest project. This project’s driving question was “How might we use stories to understand the causes and consequences of WWII?”. In this project, we created our second episode to our podcasts, where we told stories through our interviewees, obviously talking about the causes and consequences in WWII, plus still connecting it to our own podcast topics. If you’d like to know how I got to there, keep reading!

Responding to Text: Have I constructed an original connection between myself, the text, and the world?

The first competency that we were being assessed on in this project was “Responding to Text”. The milestone that I found best represented this competency would be Milestone 3. In this milestone, we read or listened to three different texts in the span of 3 weeks. After completing sheets, at the end of the week, we discussed with our table groups the connections we had made through this text and extra research we had did on something we were interested in learning more about. 

As an example, in week 3, where we listened to a video about a man named Harry Shaw who towards the end of the war, went to Dachau (the original concentration camp), to liberate the Jews that were left from that camp. The connection I had made to myself was that the person I had interviewed for my podcast happens to work in the education department there. I had also done extra research on “Cat eyes” that was was an effective technique used by the US military to transport heavy artillery at night without being seen by German planes above, which was my “connection to the world” I had made on that same worksheet. 

I think that I did pretty well with both the connections in the sheets we completed and the discussions I had with my group. I did have some great points and connections to add to the discussion, but I did have some trouble summarizing the texts we had read and listened to form a theme statement, which I would have liked to improve on. 

Using Evidence and Resources: Have I found diverse sources and evaluated them for their relevance, accuracy, and reliability?

The second competency we were being assessed on was “Using Evidence and Resources”, which I think would be best represented by milestone 2, our research. This milestone is pretty self-explanatory, so I don’t think I have to go into much detail explaining it, but it’s pretty much a section from our podcast planner that we essentially do research on our topic connected to WWII and what we think we want to include in our episodes. I was actually pretty proud of how my research turned out, it was very eye appealing, organized and had all the things that were required to be in this assignment such as 5 different sources and MLA citations. 

Analyze Cause and Consequence: Who or what influenced events to occur and what were the consequences of those events?

The next competency that I will be talking about is “Analyzing Cause and Consequence”. Out of all the milestones, I think that this competency would be best represented by milestone 5, which would be our actual episode, because this idea of “cause and consequence” was really one of the key pillars of this project. Throughout the episode, I give out several examples strictly answering this competency (although, I wish I did talk more about causes). One of my main ideas that I discussed in my conclusion part of the episode was the fact that people living at this time that were also able to make it past all sorts of traumas or other sorts of effects after the war, made them very mentally strong. Especially if they were at younger ages, because as youth, it was harder for some to process, plus then having to live on the next 70-80 years or so with all sorts of flashbacks or traumas coming back to them. It’s just crazy to me, and learning about Magdalene’s story helped give me an even better insight to that. Also, if you’d like to hear more examples of cause and consequence, make sure to listen to my episode ;). 

Global Collaborator: How might I use technology to connect to the world?

The final competency that we were being assessed on in this project was “Global Collaborator”, which for this project, I chose to talk about me finding my interviewee and getting the recordings. It was a bit of a hassle for everyone to get their interviews, since we had about a week to get them, because that was what was supposed to help us form our episodes. I had contacted the Anne Frank house and most of the people working at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site (which was the first and original concentration camp). I them found and made an interview with Maximillian Lutgens, who works in the education department at the memorial. We had two 30 min interviews, the first one, I had asked the questions I originally prepared, but later decided that I wanted to go through a different path and learn more about his grandparents that were around during the war, where is when I found Magdalene’s story. 

To finish this post off, I really had fun learning about World War II, because I didn’t know vert much about it before. This project actually got me pretty interested to learn more about the war, so I’d like to continue to do other research and watch movies. I was pretty proud of the way my episode had turned out, I just wished I had talked more about Magdalene’s life before the war and the causes of the war, because I only had about one paragraph on it. I was also pretty proud of the way I was able to connect my podcast topic to this project’s topic by turning this inspiring story into a message (where I got a lot better at from the Text Discussions). At the end of the episode, I had said that hearing such inspiring stories about these teenagers who got through living in such a brutal time, proves that you’ll be able to get through any struggle you may be going through, so never doubt your own strength. 

Anyways, make sure to listen to my episode bellow and I will see you in my next post. See ya!

ME TOO

Hey y’all and welcome back to another blog post. So, this week was a big grinding week. Doing interviews, recording our voices, preparing music and editing to put together our podcast episodes. But we had a couple in-class activities that I was pretty interested in and decided to look more into. 

One thing that we did this past week was listening to a podcast called “History of the 90’s” and the episode was titled “The one about Friends”. Friends, being the amazing sit com created in the 90’s and early 2000’s. Me, being a Friends fan for the last few years was especially interested to learn some random facts and stories about the show. We only watched about half the episode in class, so I decided to watch the rest of it back at my house. There was one story that they talked about in particular that I found a little more weird than interesting, but still interesting.

 So, so you that you don’t have to listen to the 10 min clip talking about the story, there was someone named Amaani Lyle that worked as a writer for about 4 months before they got fired. She then filed a dismissal suit against the writers and producers of Friends, where she claimed that she had been subjected to racial and sexual harassment and very dark suggestions to the show. 

There was a sign by more than a hundred film and television writers including Norman Lear and Larry David, stating that group writing requires an atmosphere of complete trust. Writers must feel not only that it is alright to fail but also that they can share their most private and darkest thoughts without concern for ridicule, embarrassment or legal accountability. In the end, the California Supreme Court sided with the writers and there was something created known as the Creative Necessity Defence. That became something that was integrated into HR paper work and basically any creative industry, education, journalism, etc. 

They also discussed that in this day, where you have to be a lot more careful about things like that and that this situation would’ve been handled way differently, especially with the whole “Me too” movement.

I actually didn’t know very much about the “Me too” movement other than the fact that it’s about sexual harassment and sexual assault, so I decided to do some research. 

So, after doing a bit of research, I found their website. They even have a healing series that is made to help survivors from sexual violence to help recover and a way for others to donate or do something to help the survivors. 

Here’s what I found on another website: “The “Me Too” movement, which focuses on the experiences of sexual violence survivors, has earned a large response in part because sexual harassment and sexual assault impact people every day. By sharing their own experiences, the movement’s proponents make clear just how common sexual harassment is. The hope is that, if people are more aware of sexual harassment and how casually it is sometimes treated, then tolerance for it will decrease and support for victims will rise.”

All in all, it is amazing that there is finally starting to be awareness spread on this subject, because it is very very necessary and long overdue. 

Bye! And I’ll see you in my next blog post!

Who Knew How Sick Podcasts Could Be?

Ahem! Testing…Testing… Can everyone hear me? Good. I am pleased to announce that the first project of my grade 10 year has now been completed. What is this project you may ask? Well, in this project, we created podcasts. And yes, if you’re a typical teenager like me, you think that the only thing you’d like to listen to is music or tv. But, let me tell you, podcasts are a lot cooler than you’d think and way underrated.

We started off this project by focusing on two things: identity and the steps we’d take to get to our final product. Let’s start with identity. We had some in-class talks, talking about how we defined identity. The way I described it was mostly using the words that are apart of worldview (geography, beliefs, knowledge, values, society, etc). If you’d like to see more about our activities and class-discussions, click here to see my second milestone on identity. But, if you decided to stay here, here’s also a smaller look at the activities we did. 

Now let’s go on to the following milestones to get us closer to our final podcast. Our third milestone was our podcast plan. It wasn’t very eye appealing as I could’ve made it, but it got my ideas across. And, although I had a strong idea on what my podcast was going to be about, I had no idea what I would make my music like or what how my podcast was going to be put together. 

As I was brainstorming different ideas I could do for my podcast, I thought about what I think would appeal to a more wide range of people and in my case, teenagers. But, I finally narrowed down to the idea of creating a podcast that could give the advice to teenagers that they are missing from their everyday lives to make them even better. Because it’s always great to learn all this information early instead of in your 20s and 30s. 

The idea came to me when I was having dinner with my parents one night. Every once and awhile, I have these long deep conversations with them about different aspects of life. So, I thought, why not put all of that wisdom into a podcast? So that’s what I did. 

Next, we created a draft for our podcast trailer. A trailer being a 1-2 minute clip of us introducing our podcasts. Now, let me tell you, my trailer draft was mega rough, because I hadn’t created my music yet and had an okay idea of how it was going to be formed. And thanks to milestone 5, it helped make that a lot easier. In this milestone, we received critique from one of our peers (thank you Grace). This came very useful to me because it gave me a much better idea on how to form my trailer as I said it would. 

Next, came our final podcast trailer and final milestone. I also added somethings such as a small clip of a short interview I recorded with my dad. I asked him about 5 questions and picked which answer I found most “attention grabbing”.

And in the making of this podcast trailer, I successfully improved my GarageBand skills. Instead of knowing nothing at all, I now know pretty much all of the basics and how to work most of it. Which is a huge win for me considering the fact that  I was convinced I would never learn how to work that app.  

To conclude, I would say that this project overall was pretty successful. I didn’t start off quite as amazing as I wanted to but then later on and when it came to my final product, I can say that I am quite proud of how it turned out. It turned out way better than I thought it would and the steps in this project taught me how to become a real podcaster and get out of my comfort zone by eventually going out to bring and interview people to feature on the show.

Bye!